What's in a link: associative and taxonomic priming effects in the infant lexicon. Arias-Trejo, N. & Plunkett, K. Cognition, 128:214–227, 2013.
doi  abstract   bibtex   
Infants develop a lexical-semantic system of associatively and semantically related words by the end of the second year of life. However, the precise nature of the lexical relationships that underpin the structure-building process remains under-determined. We compare two types of lexical-semantic relationship, associative and taxonomic, using a lexical-priming adaption of the intermodal preferential looking task with 21- and 24-month-olds. Prime-target word pairs were either associatively or taxonomically related or unrelated. A further control condition evaluated the facility of a prime word, in the absence of a target word, to promote target preferences. Twenty-four-month-olds, but not 21-month-old infants, exhibited a priming effect in both associative and taxonomic conditions, pointing to the formation of a lexical-semantic network driven by both associative and taxonomic relatedness late in the second year. The pattern of priming in 24-month-olds indicates the operation of inhibitory processes: unrelated primes interfere with target recognition whereas related primes do not. We argue that taxonomic and associative relationships between words are integral to the emergence of a structured lexicon and discuss the importance of inhibitory mechanisms in shaping early lexical-semantic memory.
@Article{Arias-Trejo2013,
  author          = {Arias-Trejo, Natalia and Plunkett, Kim},
  journal         = {Cognition},
  title           = {What's in a link: associative and taxonomic priming effects in the infant lexicon.},
  year            = {2013},
  issn            = {1873-7838},
  pages           = {214--227},
  volume          = {128},
  abstract        = {Infants develop a lexical-semantic system of associatively and semantically related words by the end of the second year of life. However, the precise nature of the lexical relationships that underpin the structure-building process remains under-determined. We compare two types of lexical-semantic relationship, associative and taxonomic, using a lexical-priming adaption of the intermodal preferential looking task with 21- and 24-month-olds. Prime-target word pairs were either associatively or taxonomically related or unrelated. A further control condition evaluated the facility of a prime word, in the absence of a target word, to promote target preferences. Twenty-four-month-olds, but not 21-month-old infants, exhibited a priming effect in both associative and taxonomic conditions, pointing to the formation of a lexical-semantic network driven by both associative and taxonomic relatedness late in the second year. The pattern of priming in 24-month-olds indicates the operation of inhibitory processes: unrelated primes interfere with target recognition whereas related primes do not. We argue that taxonomic and associative relationships between words are integral to the emergence of a structured lexicon and discuss the importance of inhibitory mechanisms in shaping early lexical-semantic memory.},
  citation-subset = {IM},
  completed       = {2014-05-05},
  country         = {Netherlands},
  created         = {2013-06-04},
  doi             = {10.1016/j.cognition.2013.03.008},
  issn-linking    = {0010-0277},
  issue           = {2},
  keywords        = {Age Factors; Child, Preschool; Female; Humans; Infant; Language; Language Development; Male; Repetition Priming, physiology; Semantics; Vocabulary; Word Association Tests},
  nlm-id          = {0367541},
  pmid            = {23688648},
  pubmodel        = {Print-Electronic},
  revised         = {2013-06-04},
}

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